NVIDIA GTX 1080 PCB Run Down

With NVIDIA having now officially launched their next generation Pascal based GTX 1070 and 1080 GPUs, there are a number of AIB partner boards coming to the market soon. We have a video today by YouTuber Actually Hardcore Overclocking that examines different custom PCBs and helps break down the differences between the various boards and their power delivery designs. If you've read about additional power phases that will be available on AIB cards that are lacking in Founder's Edition but never quite knew what that meant, this video should help.

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This guy mostly knows what he's talking about. He was right in ignoring the number of PCI-E power connectors. Those have zero impact on overclocking and more just makes the card more power efficient. He did properly identify phases, which many people don't, but he did annoyingly use the recent Nvidia nomenclature defining phases which is misleading. Ex. when saying 8+2 he's saying there's 8 core phases and 2 memory phases. This is only the recent meaning of that phrase. In the past 8+2 meant you have 10 core phases, with 8 switching in sequence plus another 2 switching in their own sequence, both summing up to deliver current to the core. For example the ATI 4890 was a 3+2 configuration for the core. Minor thing, but using Nvidia's misleading marketing terms annoys me.

For bigger things that I think he did wrong, he ignored cap quality and vdroop. Many "overclocking" cards try to have big impressive looking phases with big electrolytic caps that look cool. The problem is of the 3 main cap types you can have the big radial electrolytic caps are the lowest quality. Surface mount electrolytics tend to have superior ESR (effective series resistance. this matters for sudden load changes, or a phase switch) than the round radial electrolytics, but are more expensive and look less cool. Radials do tend to have higher capacitance than SMD, but usually electrolytic capacitance is overkill by nearly an order of magnitude on "overclocking" desktop cards, with ESR being more of a limiting factor. Even better ESR are ceramic caps, but these are the smallest and most expensive. Many of these boards completely lacked ceramic caps for the core on the front of the pcb. Maybe they made up for it on the back, but its obvious that many manufacturers are trying to make their boards look cool.

As for vdroop, many of these boards screwed over the memory. All high phase count cards except the zotac threw the memory phases way to the right of the card. This gives the current a long distance to travel, and even worse is the current needs to travel under the core phases, which will already be using many pcb layers. This also hurts core vdroop because pcb layers that the core would otherwise receive are needed to route the memory power. Then add in that 3 memory chips also have data and address lines between the core and power phases, and you have one overly worked pcb.

In short, the ASUS looked like crap to me. No top side ceramic caps and no SMD electrolytics. The powercolor card looked good for air and H20 with a good ceramic cap count, but seemed to lack the FETs to push the current or LN2. The EVGA should be good for LN2 if the backside makes up for the front side's lack of ceramics. Its electrolytic count is insane with tons of SMD caps, but it looks like it will have vdroop problems. The MSI looks decent with a good chunk of ceramics and high phase count, but lacks SMD electrolytics.

I don't get why he gave the Zotac so much crap. This card looked to be the best to me. That memory phase location is great. The PCI-E slot can route current up the left side so it can get a strong 12V connection that avoids messing with the core power side of the card and memory data and addressing. The Zotac will have the best vdroop of any card. It has a good count on ceramics and a few SMD electrolytics. Yes the FETs COULD be poor, but they could also potentially be better than the high/low combo chips on most cards.

Honestly the 25A high/50A low chip that he said Nvidia is using sounds like crap. Having a lower high side current limit than low side makes no sense. Yes high side conducts current way less often than low side so you want a smaller faster switching FET, but if you exceed that 25A the FET can still blow up. If the low side conducts 50A when it is on, then the high side also conducts 50A, so this chip is only rated for 25A due to the high side. I can see why manufacturers would avoid this chip. I'm surprised I didn't see the TI 83750 high/low combo chip on any cards as this has a 40A rating and is very commonly used on mobile cards.

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Recently, my Radeon R9 M290X stopped working (everything indicates it's broken). So, I was thinking about buying a Geforce 980m but everything I read about installing a 980m in an Alienware (GPU upgrade) mentioned about having to install modified drivers and turning off the driver signature enforcement.

My question is:
why do we have to install modified drivers?
Is there a way to install drivers directly from the official nVidia website? Modifying the BIOS and inserting UEFI drivers, or modifying the vBIOS? in order to use the official drivers?
Thanks in advance, I await a response.

Hello im new to owning an alienware laptop and i got some problems with that custom nvidia drivers for my model.
There is no Dell driver for the 765m, i´ve read about changing the nvdmi.inf and i sucessfully installed the driver already by doing that.

The problem i have is that i got no clue how to find out which section is the right for mine.
I run into some weird error as my laptop freezes on restarting or shut down, or i get the message that UxdService needs to be stopped in order to shutdown.

I tried to download the Dell Driver for the old 680m and find the right section from there but i guess im to stupid to understand as there are a lot of numbers.

This is my hardware ID. I tried using section 62. Section 64 was also already tried.
PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_11E1&SUBSYS_05801028

I can play games just fine but it annoys me not to be able to shutdown without pressing the power button for a few secs.

Very thankful if anyone could help.
Also if anyone would explain me how to do it right i´d be glad to help other members.

So I'm a recently father of 1 and struggling military personnel. No need for more details. I'm building a "gaming desktop" out of parts I'm collecting out of other people's trash basically. Running on all 2012 standards. currently I'm using a AMD Athlon II x4 clocked at 2.6 GHz on a Pegatron M2N78-LA (Violet6) motherboard with 500Gb of space and a Zotac Nvidia GT 640. I'm really proud of this setup so far because the overall price of the desktop is currently sitting at $10 for the Arctic Silver to replace the old thermal paste. The main thing I'm wanting to know from this community is whether or not the AMD Phenom is a decent processor. On paper it looks fine, but i have never built with it before, therefore I'm uncertain. Also if anyone knows of a cheap cheap MOBO that is still high quality and has 4 DIMM slots and preferably at least AM3+.

In case you own a Lenovo Y410p or Y510p laptop, you might be interested in upgrading its performance by installing an external graphics card. Ultrabay eGPU adapter designed by @gerald was proven to be a convenient plug-and-play option to do exactly that. However, for a long time only an AMD-branded GPUs could be used due to limitations in the Lenovo's stock BIOS. The purpose of the modified firmware presented here is to expand the range of available GPUs by enabling Nvidia support on Gerald's Ultrabay eGPU adapter.

Huge thanks to:
@MWichni - For efficiently assisting me during the development of this mod. By flashing dozens of BIOS builds over the course of several weeks and thoroughly describing the effects observed (or the lack thereof), he enabled me to fully understand necessary parts in BIOS structure and come up with a final solution.
@svl7 - Whose unlocked BIOS / Whitelist mod has served as a basis for this modification. His discovery of a security hole in V2.07 BIOS has provided us with a convenient BIOS flashing method that does not require a physical programmer. The Unlocked BIOS and WLAN whitelist mods originally designed by him are also implemented in this BIOS mod.
@gerald - For designing the aforementioned adapter. Without it, all this work would make very little sense.
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Resolves the "40-second reboot" issue normally encountered while using Nvidia graphics cards with Ultrabay eGPU adapter, thus allowing all Nvidia cards to be used.
Based on the latest V3.08 BIOS.
Includes Svl7's WLAN whitelist removal mod - for the convenience of aftermarket WLAN card users.
Includes Svl7's BIOS debug menu mod - for the ease of experimentation with newly available features, e.g. attempting to use Nvidia Optimus to pass eGPU video back to laptop's display.
NB! Svl7's Debug Menu is not a toy! It contains a lot of options that are either not supported or partially supported by the hardware platform and/or can disturb its normal operation or prevent the PC from booting up at all. Any of the entries not originally present in the stock BIOS should be modified at your own risk!

DISCLAIMER:ANY MODIFICATIONS YOU ARE APPLYING TO YOUR HARDWARE ARE PERFORMED AT YOUR OWN RISK! AUTHOR OF THIS MOD DOES NOT HOLD ANY LIABILITY FOR LOSS OR DAMAGE RELATED TO USING THIS SOFTWARE.

Screenshots:

Installation instructions:

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Error 43:
If you intend using the GTX10XX-series Nvidia card as the eGPU (which you probably do), you are very likely to encounter the infamous Error 43 in Windows Device Manager. This is a widely known issue in the eGPU community and is not related to this particular mod in any way. Following this guide thoroughly will in most cases resolve the Error 43 issue.